A single default controller setup works fine for casual play, but different game genres genuinely benefit from different configurations. A fast-paced shooter wants tight deadzones and responsive gyro aiming, a racing sim wants heavier, more linear trigger resistance, and a slower RPG might not need either tuned that aggressively. Building separate profiles for each lets you get the right feel per game rather than compromising on one setup for everything.
This guide focuses on what to actually put in a profile for different genres. If you also want profiles to switch automatically when a specific game launches, our Auto-Switch Profiles guide covers that automation separately, this article is about building the profiles themselves.
Creating a New Profile
- Open DSX and go to the Profiles tab.
- Click New for a blank starting point, or duplicate an existing profile if you want to build off settings you already like.
- Give it a clear, specific name, something like “FPS Competitive” or “Racing Sim” rather than something generic, this matters more than it seems once you’ve got five or six profiles built up.
- Work through the relevant tabs, sticks, triggers, lightbar, gyro, adjusting each for the genre you’re building it for.
- Save when you’re done.
What to Adjust for Fast-Paced Shooters
Tight stick deadzones help small aim corrections register quickly, and a linear response curve keeps aim tracking predictable rather than smoothed out. If you use gyro aiming, binding its activation to your aim-down-sights trigger rather than leaving it always-on tends to feel more natural, our gyro aiming guide covers that setup in more depth. For triggers, a lower activation threshold means faster registration on rapid taps, useful for semi-auto weapons or quick ADS toggling.
What to Adjust for Racing Games
Racing benefits from the opposite trigger philosophy in some ways, heavier resistance on the throttle and brake triggers can simulate real pedal feel, giving you more feedback for modulating power delivery rather than an all-or-nothing binary press. Steering sensitivity is worth tuning separately from your other profiles too, since a curve that feels great for camera aiming in a shooter often feels twitchy and unstable for steering at speed.
What to Adjust for Slower, Story-Driven Games
These genres are usually the most forgiving, you often don’t need aggressive deadzone tuning or gyro assistance at all. Where a dedicated profile still helps is in lightbar customization (matching a game’s aesthetic, or just running with the lightbar dimmed to save battery on a long session) and remapping any awkward default button layouts a specific game might ship with.
What to Adjust for Fighting Games
Fighting games care enormously about precise, consistent input timing, so this is one genre where you want to be conservative rather than aggressive with custom mappings. Avoid layering complex button combos or macros onto buttons you need for fast, exact inputs, we’ve seen real reports of custom combo mappings interfering with special move inputs in games like Street Fighter, so keep fighting-game profiles relatively close to standard unless you’ve tested a specific customization thoroughly in that exact game.
What to Adjust for Third-Person Action and Souls-Likes
Games in this category, Elden Ring and similar titles being a good example, tend to sit somewhere between shooters and story-driven games in terms of what’s worth tuning. Dodge timing benefits from the same tighter stick deadzone approach that helps aiming in shooters, since a slightly delayed or mushy stick response can genuinely mean missing a dodge window. Trigger activation thresholds are worth lowering too if the game maps heavy attacks or special abilities to L2/R2, shaving even a small amount off the required pull distance can make combat feel noticeably snappier. Camera sensitivity, on the other hand, usually benefits from staying closer to default, aggressive tuning here tends to make lock-on tracking feel unstable rather than more responsive.
Handling Multiplayer Games with Anti-Cheat
Once you’ve got more than a couple profiles, a consistent naming scheme pays off, genre first or game title first, whichever you’ll find faster when scrolling through a dropdown mid-session. It’s also worth periodically reviewing older profiles rather than letting them pile up indefinitely, a profile built for a game you stopped playing months ago is just clutter, and it’s easy to accidentally select the wrong one if your list gets too long.
If you want profiles to load automatically based on which game is running rather than selecting them manually every time, that’s handled through DSX’s Auto Profiles feature, our dedicated guide on setting that up walks through linking specific profiles to specific game executables, including some real limitations worth knowing about non-Steam games.
Getting Started
If you’re setting up DSX for the first time, grab it from its official Steam page, and our Get Started guide covers installation and initial driver setup end to end. If a profile isn’t behaving the way you expect once it’s built, our Troubleshooting guide covers the more common connection and detection issues that can sometimes look like a profile problem but aren’t.